The present invention generally relates to a storage system and its management method and, for instance, can be suitably applied to a storage system comprising at least two storage apparatuses equipped with a virtual storage function and a remote replication function.
In recent years, storage consolidation of consolidating storage apparatuses that are distributed and installed for each server at a single location, and connecting this to a server group via a storage-dedicated network such as a SAN (Storage Area Network) is becoming widespread. As one operation mode of storage consolidation, there is an operation mode of sharing one storage in a plurality of business operations. In relation to this kind of operation mode, virtual storage technology has been conventionally proposed for partitioning resources (internal resources) such as ports, cache memories and volumes in the storage apparatus into a plurality of logical partitions, and providing each logical partition as an independent virtual storage apparatus (hereinafter referred to as the “virtual storage apparatus”) to users (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-330622).
Meanwhile, there is technology for facilitating the setting for preventing operational errors by changing the user's authority to operate a volume, with the application of volume attributes as the trigger, when a plurality of users are allowed to operate that volume in a storage system (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-235976). According to this technology, if a certain user creates a replication of a volume that can be operated by a plurality of users, each user's operation authority can be automatically changed so that users other than the user who created the replication cannot perform operations to the replication of the volume.